Mash up this 3D-printed m​usic video

Australian electronic band Cut
Copy has created a stop-motion music video using 3D-printed
figurines. It's also provided a BitTorrent bundle of the music,
video and 3D files to allow fans to make their own versions.

The song in question is "We Are Explorers", taken from the album
Free Your Mind -- for a while, the only way to buy said
album, at least in the beginning, was through billboards or pressed
vinyl. The music video therefore also set out to explore the
physical medium in a playful way, answering the question "What if
we 3D-printed a music video?". It features two characters roaming
around the streets of a city picking up comparatively giant bits of
litter -- like digital wombles -- including an old cigarette butt,
a paper clip, bubble wrap, a paint brush and a CD. The
entrepreneurial characters use this detritus to build a makeshift
boat.

The video required the band and directors Masa Kawamura, Qanta
Shimizu and Aramique Krauthamer to print off around 200 figurines,
each in different poses to allow for the two characters to journey
through the city with a full range of movement. The filament used
was a yellow colour that glows under UV light.

The band said in an interview on the BitTorrent blog: "We decided pretty early on when we were
making the record that we were going to release music to the world
in a different way. There is something of an anti-climax to working
on a record for year only to have it just go up on a stream
somewhere. It dissipates so quickly. We liked the idea of doing
real world events and having a tactile quality to it."

The characters themselves were designed in Cinema4D, with groups
of eight figurines used for each type of movement -- for example a
running or walking sequence would require eight different figurines
in a sequence, designed as a loop.

Having created the video, the band wanted to hand over all of
the materials to allow fans to make their own versions of the
video. This includes the storyboards, stop-motion technical plans,
3D files for all the figurines and the music. "We want to see what
they do with it," say Kawamura and Krauthamer. "Even if people just
print the eight figurines that make up the running sequence,
there's so much they can do and so many places the story can
go."

You can find all of the files in this BitTorrent bundle. If you
do find yourself making your own stop-motion music video, the team
asks you to share it on social media using the hashtag
#weareexplorers.